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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Mar 24.
Published in final edited form as: Stress. 2020 Jun 11;24(2):154–167. doi: 10.1080/10253890.2020.1768240

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

A proposed role for glucocorticoid-dopamine interactions in appetitive conditioning. The integrative response of dopamine (DA) and corticosterone (CORT) under appetitive Pavlovian conditioning is depicted. With repeated pairings of the 8-second presention of a lever-conditioned stimulus (CS) followed by a food-unconditioned stimulus (US), CORT (pink circles) increases both peripherally and centrally, while DA (blue circles) increases within the nucleus accumbens (NAc, orange structure). Corticosterone may potentiate dopamine release by acting within the ventral tegmental area (VTA, maroon structure) to: (1) increase tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the rate limiting enzyme of DA biosynthesis, or (2) decrease monoamine oxidase (MAO), one of the degradation enzymes of DA. Alternatively, CORT may act presynaptically to mediate DA clearance and/or synaptic uptake by: (3) inhibiting the organic cation transporter (OCT3, red structure) or (4) the dopamine transporter. Finally, CORT may increase DA transmission (5) via glutamatergic synapses or (6) by acting directly upon glucocorticoid receptors (GR) within DA-receptive neurons.